A future in these lines
by Lilith Morgana
Summary: It's not always about holding hands. In the end it turns out it's about a lot more than that. ME3 moments and variations. Sequel to "Entropy". Jane Shepard/Zaeed Massani.
1. Once more unto the breach

_let's have a round for these freaks and these soldiers  
__a round for these friends of mine  
_(**carey – joni mitchel**l)

_once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more_  
(**henry v - shakespeare**)

.

.

* * *

Up close the galaxy looks ordinary, just the usual drill: exchange of credits, squabbling between Council races, your average slavers and spice dealers, ships full of refugees getting blown up or denied entry to the richer planets. If you squint you can fool yourself that nothing's going on but back away another inch and you'll catch the ugly truth.

Out here in the Caleston Rift, several hours away from the Milky way, it's easier to forget the threat to Earth and humanity.

Zaeed downs his second beer, eyeing a couple of inane-looking marines on shoreleave to his right. They are having a loud discussion about Commander Shepard and he feels like it concerns him - for reasons that he'd much rather not dig too goddamn deep into but there you go - so he keeps his wits about him. There's been a flood of shows and documentaries outlining the fate of humanity's first Spectre since her return to the Alliance and while he's not keeping track of all the bullshit or the direction it's headed, he'd say it's more or less common knowledge now that the commander came back with a few loose wires.

_Goddamn idiots. _

"... never heard if there really _was_ a trial," of the soldiers say. He's young and scrawny with a spotty face. Zaeed wouldn't trust him to carry a razor, much less a rifle.

"Damn Shepard walks out of anything," another one cuts in. "Read that article about her time on Akuze. Some crazy shit right there."

"I dunno. Heard they took her ship this time," a third one – a thick-necked, red-faced son of a bitch – offers.

A woman by his side nods excitedly. "Locked her away in the brig, last I heard."

Music pulsates through the walls in this place: bass-heavy, tune-light. It has sharp edges and an underlining sense of hysteria that Zaeed can't shake, like an itch you can't scratch.

"She's real popular though," the red-faced one adds. "Crazy as a varren but popular. Anyone else saying what she's been saying, they'd question her sanity, strip her of her rank."

"What, you don't think _you'd_ get away with blowing up all those batarians and blaming the Reapers, Sanderson?"

They all laugh as Zaeed calls for a third drink, clenching his teeth around the order and the irritation.

"Get those loud bastards another round on me," he tells the turian behind the bar. "If they agree to shut the hell up."

He's got a shitload of problems at the moment but a lack of credits is not one of those. Shepard had seen to that six months ago. And then she had, to the best of his knowledge, seen to her own imprisonment by returning the Normandy to the Alliance Navy and getting herself locked up like a goddamn war criminal. Stupid, stubborn bitch. He'd have talked her out of it if he could but he hadn't been around for it, had thought it best to disappear off the radar to deal with his own trouble instead of piling it up at her feet like everyone else in her goddamn life. Besides, it's not like you simply talk Commander Jane Shepard out of things she's got her mind set on – especially not of it involves her tight bonds to the military organisation that ate her whole and spat her out again when they were done with her, judging her experience _implausible_ and her actions _questionable_. Last he heard from her she was in custody and her communication channels cut off.

Zaeed's fingers curl around the bottle, whitening. Suddenly his omni-tool flares up and as he flicks the screen open he notices the marines do the same, as do several other guests at the bar.

"Turn off the music!" Someone shouts. "Switch on the ANC, now!"

Within seconds several screens broadcast the same thing, in bits and pieces and stuttering, jarring noises: the Reapers have reached Earth, London has fallen, the planet is under attack. Emergency protocol is being activated and Zaeed's stomach lurches in a rare, painful way. He's felt it ever since he saw those goddamn pods in the goddamn Collector ship and he feels it again now, a protectiveness rising from some unknown depths inside him. _You're not doing this shit to us, you ugly bastards. You're not taking my planet. _He despises Earth and the very notion of patriotism alike, but that's not the damn point. If this isn't _different_, then he doesn't know what is. As he gets to his feet and passes the gaping marines he allows one perfectly placed elbow to hit the red-faced one right between his eyes.

_That's for calling her crazy, __jackass__. _

Then he fires up his comm links and heads for his ship. It's time to get back to work. 


	2. Above rank and file

On Menae she finally stops long enough to take in what's happened.

On Menae, half-way inside a burning shipwreck on a moon orbiting around a burning Palaven, Shepard stands absolutely still for a few seconds and opens her mind to the flurry of images and insights that scatter all over her. Earth, Mars, the Illusive Man at the Archive –_ you were a tool, an agent with a single purpose_ – and everything that came after; Kaidan being rushed away to surgery, the hospital at the Citadel that had been much too crowded to instil any sort of hope in her. They're past all that now. Long past hope and faith, running on determination and anger, an eagerness to avenge every fallen ally.

It's going to be a long war for those who still count the losses.

"Shepard." Garrus is beside her now, voice urgent and low. "We've got to pick up the pace."

She nods, starts moving again.

Time had slipped away from her in the brig; she had somehow forced herself to stop caring about it, the passing of days on the outside while she was stuck on the inside organising reports and signing export/import requests like a proper security guard. She had cut off the stream of time to protect her sanity – always a survivor first and foremost – and now it comes heading towards her again, crashing into her carefully arranged system like a Reaper.

While she had always suspected the collective wills and authorities of Admirals Anderson and Hackett would have gotten her ship out of drydock and herself out of inaction sooner or later, the attack on Earth had still hit them out of nowhere and left them no time for preparations. You are always ready but you can't always be _ready_. Her dog tag around her neck again now, but the feel of it has shifted from back when she first received it; its mix of metals is cool and light, weighs almost nothing.

They keep moving on Garrus's orders and Shepard listens to him explaining the planet to Lieutenant Vega as they cross a field where a few husks are being shot at by turians lined up behind a large shelter. Vega is full of questions now that he's fallen in line after his stunt on Mars. She had itched to smash his skull when he all but wrecked their escape route because of his own reckless death wish and it towers inside her now as well, the anger that she needs to deal with once they have a moment to themselves. They don't, so instead she listens to the guided tour behind her.

"This moon and its sister moon were classified by the Hierarchy. They feared a clever enough enemy force might try to smash them into Palaven during the Krogan wars."

"That's an option now?" she asks Garrus who looks at her over his shoulder, mandibles twitching.

"Last resort." They all duck as a Reaper beam screeches through the air – far away but not far enough _not_ to trigger instincts. "It's too hard to evacuate and it would only kill the groundside forces."

"Right."

The lieutenant looks sideways at her but says nothing, as though he _hasn't_ been thinking what Shepard is thinking, what has branded itself inside her brain since Vancouver – that they might not be able to save the planets, that they might have to blow them up system by system until the Reapers are stuck somewhere in time. He's a good soldier with a mind for tactics; he must have been trying out the same thoughts. But they've had the same story told over and over ever since Earth so Shepard gives her subordinate a brief nod before looking at Garrus. They might be past hope but she intends to do her best to deny it.

"Did we ever tell you about Saren, Lt?"

.

.

.  
.

Later, after a shower and three mugs of Normandy-coffee Shepard scratches the back of her head with one of the datapads in her hands as she follows Comm Specialist Traynor through the second deck.

"A fire?" she repeats, re-reading the message from Joker while talking to him at the same time.

"The AI core's gone haywire," he confirms.

"He's right, Commander." Traynor stops by a console that appears unresponsive to whatever command or code she attempts to give it.

"Great." Shepard exhales and tries to remember to lower her shoulders while she's at it. Her entire body feels tense and heavy. "I'll go check it out."

The turmoil in the AI core, she thinks afterwards when she walks back up the stairs to make a call to Admiral Hackett, is precisely the kind of unforeseeable events that used to make her initial runs with the Alliance so much fun. They are also the kind of thing that make her sleep uneasy now because every mistake matters at this point, every step outside the margins she has drawn for them. What used to make for neat stories to swap over drinks has become life and death, another name for her memorial wall.

Of course, Hackett isn't exactly lifting that load off her, either.

"The reality is, Shepard, everything I'm doing is a delaying action for you."

She inhales deeply, exhales again, hoping he doesn't notice her momentary lack of confidence. It's the prothean device that eats away at the corners of her mind, all the unknown variables and implications of it, all its inherit danger. The atomic bomb during the Second World War. She remembers reading about that for some N7 course, seeing old photos of nuclear wastelands.

"Yes, sir."

He sacrificed the entire second fleet to provide cover for the third and the fifth. She hears the numbers there in his voice, fathoms the losses that were necessary but never acceptable and a wave of compassion hits her stomach. Admiral Hackett who is hard and unrelenting, never looking for the easy way out but a good officer, a good _man_. When he first heard that the other marines had dubbed her Butcher of Torfan he had looked at her, seen the uneasy harshness curved around that title, and nodded simply. _I've been called worse than that, lieutenant. _

She wants to give him the same kind of nod now; she knows he would never allow it.

.

.

.  
.

"You look tired, Shepard." Liara's voice is soft, her words falling gently across the room. She's by her screen as usual but her expression is a relaxed one which tells Shepard it's a relatively slow day for the information broker aboard.

"I _am_ tired."

A couple of years ago she'd never have admitted such a thing – would never have displayed it openly enough for anyone to pick up on it, either. It had been part of the training, part of the package. Everything is different now. In small ways, everything has been altered.

"Come in, sit down."

Shepard brushes past Glyph and slumps down in an armchair near Liara's bed. Her quarters are neat as usual, kept clean and sterile by a lack of belongings more than anything. These days they don't carry much with them.

"Did you have anything for me?" She makes the question sound casual but the outlines of it are frayed and her emotions are showing, she can tell by the way the asari attempts to hide her own.

"Yes, Shepard."

The leather feels dry and cool in the curve of her neck as she leans back, folding her arms across her chest like any commanding officer awaiting a report. Codes of conduct to keep other things at bay, the endless alienation of yourself. Liara offers a brief smile.

"Zaeed Massani," she reads off her datapad. "Was last seen in the Horsehead Nebula tracking down a Cerberus vessel. He appears to have made no attempts of hiding his identity or the signature of his own ship. Docked at Cresti spaceport two days ago. No further reports available."

Shepard grins inwardly. Not Zaeed's style to use covers; he can complain all he wants about her lack of stealth, given his own preference for keeping his name visible in everything he does._ If the goddamn Reapers blow me to pieces at least I want them to know who they killed, _he says in her memory or her imagination. Maybe both. Six months in lock up and your start to lose your way inside your own mind.

"Why's he going after Cerberus?" she says, mostly to herself but Liara frowns, taking on the question herself. Occupational habit, that inability to let things be untouched, left alone or researched by someone else. A single-minded,obsessive salarian scientist, she thinks at times. That's all anyone ever is.

"I don't know that, Shepard. Do you want me to find out?"

"No." She pauses, re-thinks. The danger of being friends with the Shadow Broker is that lines of privacy and ethics start to blur in the face of curiosity and greed. "Not yet. I'll get back to you."

She allows herself to remain in the armchair for a moment longer, eyes closed, not thinking too deeply about the wave of relief that wraps itself around her like a blanket.


	3. At the gates of Hades

The hangar on the nearest moon outside of Omega is packed so tight with people on the run that Zaeed has to stand pressed up against the nose of someone's half-wrecked shuttle - an old Turian model, popular to make replicas of, he remembers somewhere at the back of his mind - to avoid having a loud krogan merc feeling him up, sending sour breaths down his neck.

No ships allowed to orbit around Omega, no shuttles going in he learns and re-learns here, but these fools - Zaeed included - keep trying. At least half the crowd in this place is looking to profit on the refugees, he wagers, but then there are a few like him as well, a few homeless, hopeless wrecks searching for people angry enough to put up a hell of a fight. He's not expecting them to be able to do much but anything will do at this point. He's here for that.

As the low-quality screens flare up with the noise and colours of the intergalactic news channel, he has to admit to himself that he's here partly for that, too. There's the usual blur of footage and vids of Palaven burning, turians falling, Earth under attack, faces of important people that are missing or confirmed dead, faces of hundreds of thousands that are dead too but insignificant, uncounted. War comes with a fucked-up set of morals to begin with and this one is like nothing else. Zaeed's pretty sure not even the miserable preachy bastards that are usually on air, offering their professional opinion on politics or council matters - _the multifaceted face of contemporary cross-spieces relationships_ and similar bullshit - could have counted on this. He wonders if they're all blown to pieces now or if they'll show up at the end of this war like some nasty surprise, analysing the implications of large-scale intergalactic war across the solar systems and how it will forever change the face of the universe.

And then there's a moment of raspy, semi-disconnected comm-links and the images on screen flicker worse than before as the nagging voice of some human reporter Zaeed only vaguely recalls having seen before appears.

"Live from the war effort... our troops... SSV Normandy." He only catches every other word but it's strangely _enough_, a flush of warmth into his body even before the reporter looks into the cam and offers what he guesses is her best serious-but-sexy look. She just looks tired and he can't tell if it's part of the package or a side-effect of trying to cover the ridiculously depressing flow of news from the Systems Alliance's best and brightest. Not _his_ type, that's for damn sure. "Commander Shepard and Mayor Alenko are hard at work... Fleet Admiral Hackett..."

Zaeed scratches the back of his neck - a fresh, stinging cut there; he should find some new medigel for that - and turns his gaze away from the screen. He feels, vaguely, like he's been ran over though he can't say by what or _whom_, only that it leaves him somewhat out of breath.

.

.

* * *

.

.  
.

"I would have figured you'd be all about humanity first, Massani." The woman in front of him adjust herself in her seat, her gun still resting on the table.

He shrugs. "Turns out I'm not, sweetheart."

The term of endearment makes her snort and rake one gloved hand through her hair. She's almost his age, voice like a chain-smoking bar singer and deadly fucking reactions that had nearly landed him another bullet in his brain half an hour ago, as she caught him snooping around her flat. He'd been looking for clues about a couple of Cerberus trails that have gone cold lately, she'd been looking for intruders to kill. Turns out they have mutual friends and – more importantly – mutual enemies. Rahida isn't one for wasting ammo on someone who might be useful to her and neither is he, so instead they have cracked open a bottle of vodka as some kind of arcane ritual. A drink to shaky trust and not slitting each other's throats.

"What did Cerberus do to piss you off?"

Well, that's the billion dollar question. He'd left the Normandy in a hurry, wrapped up in thoughts of revenge and Vido and the Reapers and half-arsed plans for the filthy amount of credits he'd made, blowing up enemies with the most impressive soldier in the galaxy. When he signed the contract he had practically _drooled_ just thinking about the money. Now it's almost as if he can't spend it fast enough.

"They're a bunch of crazy fucking bastards," he says, looking at the drink in his hand. He's not going to taste it as long as there's a loaded gun pointed at him, but he's got to admit it looks damn fine.

"I sold some information about their plans for a base on Earth." Rahida grins as she catches him pining for his vodka, then she takes a sip of her own. "Not popular."

He exhales and tastes the alcohol, not taking his good eye off the weapon on the table. "Assholes can have Earth all they want now. As long as they stay there, I won't goddamn mind."

"True, that."

Except it's not, not for either of them.

There's a ripple through the air, a shade of familiarity flaring up between them and he thinks of Shepard, of the Normandy and long off-duty hours spent trash-talking the streets back on their homeworld. _You ever visited Boston? More human supremacy idiots per square foot than actual breathable air. Gotta be better than Budapest, though._ Nothing like hating your origins together, he finds. Nothing like having that powerful, vast history in common.

Zaeed grew up in a filthy little hole in the wall, a goddamn dump outside of London - later Berlin, Paris, every formerly famous city now gone to hell. Grew up on concrete and pollution, poor nutrition bars and disgusting human food, half-heartedly cooked by someone who'd much rather be drinking. Everything in there, in his home, had smelled of piss and chemicals, a sharp sort of stench that never left, no matter how much his mother occasionally attempted to clean. You can't get away from _filth_, it clings to you, gets deep inside your bones. It sticks, like a tattoo or the bloody dead. Some things really do rattle around in there like ghosts, he knows by now: the sight of _space_ under the soles of your feet for the first time, the feeling of cracking your dad's nose against your knuckles; the weight of a dozen of your own people holding you down like a mad dog as the bullets hit your goddamn face; the wet softness of someone's lips tracing the scars, many years after they have hardened into steel.

Fuck this stupid sentimentality.

He swallows the entire drink in one go.

Fuck this goddamn _war_.

"I'm looking for a volus," he admits as the vodka smooths over the frayed edges of his mind. "Care to help me with that?"


	4. We hear the machines

She blinks, trying to crawl back up from the heavy, exhausted sleep. It's still there, under her skin.

The rachni in the shadows, the stench of corruption and old mistakes torn open, a breathless blur of guns firing and twisted creatures screeching and her team, hesitating in front of her, the doubt so visible that she had heard herself shout back at them. _It's an order. She's too valuable an asset to lose now. _They had followed her directives though she hardly thinks they _get_ it. Not even Garrus. Especially not Garrus.

Tuchanka in all its scorched earth-glory, rising beneath their feet, crumbling beneath their feet and above their heads and in all the dark corners beneath, in the unspoken darkness.

_Mordin_.

Wrex pressing forward and then the soil itself that had seemed to respond to their efforts by pushing away the enemy – an enemy that moves far apart from every war they can remember, every conflict in their records and files. An enemy that doesn't let itself be torn apart that easily but every opponent, Shepard knows in every cell of her body, can be chased away. Maybe only for a moment, maybe only in bits and pieces but it's possible. There is _hope_.

When she sits up straight she notices her screen blinks. Eleven unread messages. Five incoming calls. Hackett on the line.

Shepard pushes herself out of bed.

.

.

.  
.

* * *

.

.

. 

She blinks, trying to adjust her sight to the dark room, her brain to the fleeting fragments of recollections and impressions. Memories. As she groans to herself – something hurts in her ankle, a twisting, sharp kind of pain that she can't even remember the way she doesn't remember much from her body pre-cybernetics – there are flashes of knowledge that snaps into place. One memory. Then another. And a full string of them, completing the picture.

A coup at the Citadel, the last thing she would have expected to being forced to deal with at the moment. Not that it's all that strange given the fact that Cerberus are supremacist assholes working every angle to profit from the ongoing war, but it's still something they didn't prepare for. Nothing they talked about over coffee back when she was locked up by the Alliance.

Turns out, of course, that they had managed even a coup. At least most of them. At least mostly.

"Shepard." Kaidan stands before her all of a sudden and she's confused, for a beat she doesn't remember how he got here, how he got out of hospital and into the Normandy. "You alright?"

She rubs her temples, frowning. She had shot Udina. _Killed_ him and the only thing she recalls from that moment when she pulled the trigger is that it was such a perfect shot. Textbook example, the kind an ageing tutor would rant and rave about to new recruits. _Back when I was your age.._. Kaidan had looked at her with a completely different expression afterwards, she remembers that, too. There had been shades of hesitation – doubt – about her actions but he'd never _not_ have her back, not unless he's morphed into someone else than the man she got to know during the Geth war.

Mayor Alenko reporting for duty on the Normandy. Again. As it should be.

"Always fine, Kaidan."

A familiar little half-smile crossing his features. "Of course."

There are probably things they need to talk about. Her crew, her superiors, the two of them; there are a lot of things _everybody_ needs to talk about but for the time being, Shepard just wants to have a shower, a major bowl of coffee and a chat with Liara to run a double-check on survivors outside of their immediate ranks. Lawson, had they heard anything from her? Kasumi, even if Shepard always assumes she's alive and well somewhere in the shadows. Zaeed. She really wants to know if Zaeed has been caught in some galactic cross-fire, wants to know where he _is_.

"There have been too many close-calls lately." Kaidan's voice drops slightly as he walks up to one of the large windows in one of the lounges. "And I'm still trying to wrap my head around what just happened with Udina."

"What about it?" Shepard takes a few steps too, leaning against the glass that separates them from the voids and Reapers outside the ship, feeling that low-burning sense of responsibility that separates her from everything else in the galaxy. Her own desires rest safe and sound somewhere outside that glass, out of sight out and of mind. "Talk to me."

In her nightmares that never end she can barely move. Classic nightmare scenario, of course, except she doesn't know if nightmares are typically about ancient alien races soaring in the sky, making the sound of destruction echo everywhere in their wake. That sound. It grinds its way inside your head, falls into some hollow of your bones where it remains, like an implant that brings no life, only death.

_We hear the machines_ and the sorrow in that voice, that fate.

In her nightmares that never end everything always falls. She stands there, numb with fear and inaction and watches everything fall. And the most frightening part - the one that's a dark stitch in her chest – is how liberating it it, how endlessly, hopelessly _free_ it makes her. Even if she dies, even if they all die.

_We hear the machines. _


	5. Clear skies

Shepard leans forward on her elbows, flickering through her datapad as she pokes with one hand in a bowl of some sort of oatmeal. That's what the mess sergeant claims it is at least. At this point, after so many years on the Normandy, carrying out emergency mission after emergency mission with no end in sight, she could probably sacrifice a colony or two for some decent food. Properly cooked, fresh ingredients, some good beer on the side. Meat and potatoes and cheese or candy with soda, she's not picky at this point. _You have the palate of a five year old_, Anderson had teased her once, when she was a new recruit and needed cheering up.

_Anderson_. There's that bottomless fear in her at the thought of him, the mere mention of his name. Will they even see each other – or Earth - again?

"So Din Korlack is leaking info to Cerberus?" Garrus looks at her across the table in the mess hall.

"That's what the intel C-sec forwarded suggests, yeah." She isn't sure she believes it, but she's trying to walk through these times with a permanently clear mind as some sort of last attempt at not being lied to and betrayed. "At this point, I'm not ruling out anything."

"Yeah, makes sense."

If someone had asked for her opinion on Cerberus ten years ago she would probably have been able to recite something from some N7 training lecture on minor organisations and groups. Probably, no guarantees. These days she could _give_ that damn lecture and she's so sick of hearing the name everywhere she turns, sick of dealing with their bullshit on top of trying to prevent the Reapers total destruction of the galaxy. The whole blindly aggressive agenda, the husks, the unknown, unmentionable resources they seem to preside over and with every such thought, she can almost imagine the tech inside her countering her negativity. _Tick, tock, your time is up. The fight you can't win. We own you._

"He's always been a rude bastard," she says, reaching for her coffee. "That doesn't make you a Cerberus spy, though. We'll thread carefully here. A lot of things at play."

Garrus nods, simply.

He's been a comfort lately. That's what their relationship has evolved into, after two long tours through the galaxy together. They had both been different people from the start, some edges to polish and experience to gain and that string of conflicts and conclusions that make you something more than a good soldier or officer, that makes you stand out. _Couldn't have done it without you, Vakarian_, she thinks now when she looks at him. It's not exactly true – these clichés never are – but it's not a lie either; the bonds you forge, the people you tie yourself to, they do matter. In the end, those bonds are the only things that do.

While she hasn't yet picked him up on his offer to outdrink her some night if she needs a distraction, she can definitely see it happening in a near future. Maybe they should bring Kaidan, too. Or Zaeed. If she manages to find that wretched man in the midst of a burning war, she will definitely bring him to a bar and make him tell some of his long-winded stories that seem to never have an end, but still somehow manages to not be boring. Unlike most people she knows, at least he's never boring. Wasn't that what he had said about her, once? _You don't bore me, Shepard._

The bonds. They really do matter.

"Kasumi checked in with T'Soni earlier, right?" Garrus finishes his own food – that looks more edible than Shepard's – and leans back in his seat.

"Right. Last night. Or, well, sometime before I slept." She smiles a little. Time blurs; they're officially on the same schedule as the Normandy has always been but with everything's that's happened and keeps happening, it's not like they have a strict line between night and day any more. You eat, sleep and work regardless.

"Not that I was worried. She could sneak out of a Reaper if she had to."

"Let's not test that theory."

He gives a little snort that sounds like laughter, before falling silent for a beat. "What about Lawson? Zaeed?"

There's a shift in his voice at the last name and Shepard feels it in her gut.

"Not a word," she admits thought part of her feels like she shouldn't, like they ought to adopt a new policy that states that things they never mention in words are just _fine_ or don't even exist. Don't ask, don't tell, don't _jinx_. "But we're having serious comm link issues."

Garrus nods. "Getting worse, too."

There's a torrent of voices coming from outside the elevator, suggesting a new crowd has arrived for their meal. Shepard rakes a hand through her hair, glancing at the datapad again. No new notifications.

"Zaeed's probably retired from the Reapers," Garrus offers as he catches her gaze again. "Bought his own planet. A moon somewhere."

She has to chuckle at the image – which isn't too difficult to conjure up either - of Zaeed having a whole world to himself. It would consist of booze, cigarette, the kind of crappy vids he likes to watch and the strategy games he thinks she hasn't noticed he plays on his omni-tool during downtime. No _goddamn_ _idiots_ in sight on that planet, that's for sure. Makes her wonder if she'd qualify for a visit herself. Probably not.

And amusing mental images aside it's hard to see him giving up now. He's not one for leisure, he might know more about it than she does but that doesn't say much. And it's that fuel inside him – hot passion burnt to bitterness – that makes her _miss_ him in a way she thought she never would.

.

.

.

* * *

.

.

He has weird fucking dreams lately.

Not that nightmares are anything new in his life – he's learned some tricks to avoid them, found that vodka works best – but there's a difference now. Ever since the Reapers, ever since that goddamn footage from Earth, hell ever since he first shook Shepard's hand on Omega, it's been _different_. The shit he's seen have torn his mind apart at the edges. Figures, of course, that he'd finally go mad in the end. His mother sure had. Except he'll finish himself off once he's started going downhill, not wait it out like his mum, sit in a dump of a flat somewhere with the blinds down and just wait. For what, he had never understood. Better times, Zaeed. No, a bullet in his head – the good side, the one that isn't stitched together with a billion little pieces of metal – will do.

Zaeed dreams of Vido now. Dreams of his mother, his father, of random bastards he's met along the way. Shireen. He dreams of her, too. In his dreams she's still young and stupid but tough like nails and funny as hell, always making him laugh. Now, in his twisted dream version, she dies like a dog with the rest of them, right before his eyes.

He dreams of Shepard - her mouth curled into one of those rare grins, teeth flashing in the darkness – but always wakes up before she's fallen onto the pile of corpses.

"You're looking for someone," Rahida tells him – she doesn't ask questions, seems to think she's too smart for it, that she's got everybody pegged down – as they're preparing to head out of her little ship.

Zaeed double-checks the state of the ammo in his rifle. "Yeah, Volus ambassador. Ugly guy. Remember?"

"Someone _else_," she clarifies, like it hadn't been obvious before. "Someone you're not going to shoot or sell out for cash."

_You're mistaking me for Vido, you bastard. _

"What makes you so sure about that." He accidentally runs his hand across the wall to his right and grimaces at the stains it brings. This little vessel thinks of unwashed surfaces and dirty floors; Rahida doesn't clean and Zaeed isn't bloody likely to, either. He pays good money to travel with her, the greedy bitch. He thinks, for a second, about the Normandy and all the comforts of that beast of a ship. Goddamn _beauty_.

"I just am." Rahida shrugs. "I see it in your face."

He scoffs. "That's scar tissue, sweetheart."

His new and likely very temporary companion shakes her head, says nothing more for a long while. Not until she's packed all of her stuff and stands ready in front of him.

"You ready, Massani?"

"I'm always ready."

.

.

.  
.

* * *

.

.

.

And then, on an unusually clear channel at the Citadel, she hears Zaeed's voice for the first time in forever and it lands with a blow in her chest.


	6. These old bones of war

"So it's _her_, is it?" Rahida's voice is smug, cool like the metal walls against the back of his head as they recuperate and wait for the goddamn cavalry to arrive; cool and annoying like the echo of bullets that pierce your skull again and again in the middle of the night. This entire woman is like a bad nightmare. Or maybe he's being an unfair arsehole again, it's been known to happen.

"The hell are you talking about?"

She still has one of her pistols drawn – not one to take Zaeed's word for anything – but her posture is relaxed, almost arrogant. Moments like these she reminds him of Shepard and that insight swirls around, refusing to land.

"The one you're looking for, Massani."

There's no denying he had been all instincts and rash decisions the second he understood Shepard was involved in this stupid goddamn mission, the second he realised he had crossed paths with her more or less by accident. _Yeah, right, you mad old dog._ There's no denying that he had felt – that he _feels_ – a sort of trust that he'd much rather not acknowledge, at least not at his age, with his arsenal of experience. Makes everything so bloody complicated.

Rahida's gaze on him is heavy; he shrugs.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." A grim grin flashes on her face for a half second. "So I guess this is where I leave you."

She wants nothing to do with the Alliance, he can understand it very well. That itch to leave before you step into a mess that's more than you bargained for, the urge to just grab your reward and fuck off. Even if the stupid volus isn't very vocal at the moment, Zaeed knows they'll both get a fair amount of credits for saving his fat arse. People like him are always terrified of dying, could very well offer their own children if it gets them out of trouble. Rahida will get her payment.

Zaeed rubs a sore spot on his neck as he looks through the window, down the Citadel-shiny corridor. Screens flashing their ads everywhere, like nothing has happened. If it weren't for the Alliance bastards spewing their occasional propaganda – Admiral Hackett wants you – no one would even guess the whole galaxy was under goddamn Reaper attack. Stupid fucking movies nobody wants to see, fragrances nobody will have time to wear before they're blown up, hotels that might not even survive the upcoming cycle. Then again, maybe that's what he would have done if he hadn't been leaping across the skies with a rifle since he was too young to know better. Maybe that's what he would have ended up doing – celebrating the end of the world by going to a hotel in distant nebula, closing his eyes and hoping he'd die quick, at least.

It's different if you're a fighter. Doesn't matter what _kind_ of fighter you are, he can see the same determination in the eyes of every scumbag he comes across these days, in every waste of space that should be in a cell somewhere or dead a long time ago. That stubborn idiocy: _you won't take me alive. _

"Steer clear of the Reapers," he says and Rahida chuckles darkly.

"You were good company, Massani. Even if you're an idiot."

As she walks away, the volus makes a noise that sounds like muffled laughter.

.

.

* * *

.

.

The relief is like a warm, quick blow. A punch in the chest, a twist to her stomach.

His gaze on her is steady as she enters the room, keeping her arms folded across her chest for the last few steps up to him; he looks tired, she feels exhausted and yet they are both the lucky ones. That knowledge is a weariness in itself, tingling inside her veins. Still, it's good to see him. More than that, much _more_ but boiling beneath the surface and she shakes it off.

"It's been a while, Zaeed." She can't stop a grin from appearing on her face, nonetheless.

"Shepard." And there's a hitch in his tone, a shadow of something. "Glad I was wasn't making an ass of myself over a hunch."

Din Korlack moves about in the opposite corner of the room, still looking shell-shocked and disoriented. Ordinarily she would probably be by his side right now, making sure he was okay. But the Cerberus involvement holds her back, part of her hoping recent events nag and burn inside him. Instead she turns back to Zaeed.

"You've kept yourself busy."

"Yeah." He glares at the guard corpses on the floor. "Goddamn Cerberus bastards keep popping up. Been tracking those fuckers for a while now."

"I figured the Illusive Man would want to keep you," she says, because she had always figured he never really understood Zaeed enough to realise that it wasn't going to happen. Shepard understands him better, understands that you don't work up a reputation as one of the best mercs in the galaxy only to accept jobs from a class A bully with shady prospects. That's just idiotic and Zaeed's not an idiot.

"Wanted me to track the rest of you down," he says, almost on cue. "Wasn't going to happen."

She allows her gaze to linger for a bit, take him in properly. "And the retirement plan?"

He gives her an unreadable glance at that, something shifting beneath the neutral look in his eyes. There is nothing neutral about him in her memory and Shepard struggles with it now, those images of him, of them. If anything it had been more _intense_ than she had pictured it, much more urgent than she would have thought, as though her body had acted on its own, as though the whole ridiculous situation around them had crashed into it all, wrecked them together with brute force. They had tried to make light of it, did their best to tease and play, but the echo in her afterwards, the heavy imprint of his body against hers, tells a different story. One she isn't sure she wants to know.

Zaeed makes a disgruntled noise. "Yeah, not much of a retirement if the Reapers are going to zap me into one of those fucking pods."

Shepard rakes a hand through her hair; it smells faintly of disinfectants and chemicals. Normandy-clean. "I'm working on that," she says, realising when the words leave her mouth that they come out as sighs, a whole chain of them.

There's a wry smile in the corners of Zaeed's mouth. "Of course you are."

She stands beside him in silence for a while, watching the scene. Zaeed squares his shoulders; she can feel his body heat against her arm, a soft gust of _presence_.

These past few months have been a jumbled mess of terror and utter relief at seeing familiar faces, hearing well-known voices nearby again after the shitty stay with the Alliance, far from the places where she could have made a difference. She had felt it at the first sight of Alenko at the Citadel, felt it as Liara had joined her again, as they had found Garrus, _Chakwas_, hell even a few low-ranking crewmen she's pretty sure she'd never be able to remember the names of but they had been there, they had called her Lieutenant Commander Shepard without hesitation and sworn their loyalty to her cause.

She felt it the moment she heard his voice again, a tremble through the room.

She wonders briefly what she would have done if they had been different people. If she would have looked at him differently, if she would have touched him. A hand on his arm, maybe, a semi-possessive gesture for everyone to see. But you hardly do that to someone you sleep with on some kind of _dare_, someone you fucked because you both wanted to prove a point or satisfy an urge you refuse to find words for.

"It's good to see you," she says before she has time to regret it, because she has words for _that_. "What are you really doing here?"

He seems to think about his answer for a moment. "Later," he says then, and the relief takes another turn inside. "C-sec is on their way, won't be too pleased with the mess we've made. That dull son of a bitch in command doesn't like me half as much as he fancies you. Catch up with me at the docks if you like."

.  
.

* * *

.

.

Of course Shepard would make the goddamn Alliance uniform look good, Zaeed thinks to himself later as he watches her make her way through the hordes and scattered groups of refugees held up down here. Blue with golden fucking stripes, all proper military code and he wants to tear it off, for more reasons than he cares to count. She looks disturbingly goddamn sexy in it, for one thing. That's enough for him.

The batarians nearby glare as she approaches – he's watching them carefully, wants to make sure they're not up to some stupid shit he can prevent – but she doesn't even blink.

When she's spotted him she stops, nods a little.

Zaeed gives her a nod back. "Wondered if you'd show up, Shepard. Figured you'd be too busy."

Leaning against the wall opposite him, she folds her arms. "I can always use more help."

"I bet. I've seen footage of what happened. On Earth." He doesn't say what it had done to him, doesn't have to. It does the same to everyone, he can hear it in the noise among the people here, in every overheard conversation, every exhausted argument, every _scream_. "Tell you what, I'll see if some old contacts of mine are still around. Can't promise you anything but if half of them are still breathing I can lend a hand."

She flashes him a wry grin. "Good enough for me."

Last time he saw her she had been asleep in a hard and heavy kind of way, making her oblivious to everything around her. If he's honest he can still see her, spread out on her stomach with one pillow over her head as though it would block out the rest of the goddamn galaxy. He had hesitated before he left, had looked over his shoulder and thought _fuck this bullshit, I'll hang around_ but in the end, of course, he hadn't. A lot of shitty things can be said about him but he's not a delusional bastard.

"So," he says, glancing at her and those distracting stripes on her shoulder. _Yes, ma'am, loud and clear ma'am._ "Word on the street is that you shot Udina."

For a second Shepard looks annoyed, then she lowers her shoulders and shakes her head slightly, a familiar expression appearing behind the mask of code and protocol. Her own face. He knows it well, maybe better than most.

"It's been one hell of a roller-coaster since I was reinstated. You wouldn't believe half of it."

"Yeah? Try me. It's not like I have anything better to do down here."

A low chuckle. "Story of your life, Zaeed."


End file.
